Salzburg

I remember when I found out that we were going to be traveling to Salzburg.I could barely contain my excitement.Salzburg is a beautiful mountain town in Austria, on the border of Germany with views of the gorgeous Eastern Alps.

Over the years, there have been a few things that have helped put Salzburg on the map. If you’ve ever seen the film Sound of Music, you’ve seen Salzburg in all its glory. Many of the famous scenes in this film movie were shot in Salzburg during the summer of 1964. Salzburg is also the birthplace of world-renowned composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or ‘Mozart’ for short. You can’t walk two blocks in Salzburg without seeing the name ‘Mozart’ somewhere, whether on a candy bar or a street sign.

While we didn’t run into Julie Andrews or Mozart himself (thankfully), we were able to experience a couple of nights in the same beautiful town that they themselves walked the streets of.

I had always envisioned stepping off the train and seeing rolling green hills, blue skies, and children singing do-re-mi. But, that’s not what Salzburg looks like in the winter and is definitely not what we saw when we stepped off the train.

We arrived during a snowstorm and it couldn’t have been more beautiful. Walking through the snow with my husband in the lamp-lit streets was like a dream come true. Baroque architecture all around us, we took in the sights of what many call, “Rome of the North”.

During one of our evenings in Salzburg, we attended a Mozart concert dinner at the Baroque Hall St. Peter, the oldest known restaurant in Europe (first mentioning in 803). It is part of the famous Benedictine monastery, located in the oldest part of Salzburg. The Mozart family was said to have dined here frequently. The dishes were prepared according to recipes from the time of Mozart. – Let’s just say the music he made was much better than the food he ate. We ended the night journeying by foot, back to our hotel, the Sheraton Grand Salzburg.

Prior to visiting Austria, Cameron and I were researching, trying to figure out what we would explore once there. We were finding that the Austrian coffee culture is among the most renowned in the world. Our encounters proved this to be very true. Coffee houses in Austria have a very specific atmosphere – unlike anything we’d experienced before. Warm, inviting, but still maintaining a high level of cultural sophistication and establishment. And the coffee? Everything we’d hoped it would be, and more.

That being said, we couldn’t end our trip to Salzburg without paying a visit to what many claim is Europe’s oldest continuously working café. So, on our last morning in Salzburg, we woke up at dawn and walked from our hotel, along the banks of the Salzach River to hunt for that much needed coffee.

Café Tomaselli, established in 1700, is believed to be as old as the tradition of drinking coffee in Europe. It is said that the Mozart family frequented this café for its pastries and coffee. Admittedly, this was the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had and probably my favorite breakfast experience in recent memory. I dream on a regular basis of this coffee paired with the legendary Tomaselli apple strudel and cream slice.

After our breakfast, we took one final stroll through the Alter Markt (Old Town) and headed straight for the station and boarded our train. Salzburg in the snow was beautiful, but Salzburg in the spring is still on our bucket list.